hold fast to the clue which you have caught up on entering, or the
adventure proves impossible, and you emerge from his precincts defeated
and disgraced. And by us children of Mudie, to whom a novel must be
either a solemn brandy-and-soda or as it were a garrulous and vapid
afternoon tea, adventures of that moment are not often attempted.

Pamela.

Again, when all is said in Richardson's favour it has to be admitted
against him that in _Pamela_ he produced an essay in vulgarity--of
sentiment and morality alike--which has never been surpassed. In these
days it is hardly less difficult to understand the popularity of this
masterpiece of specious immodesty than to speak or think of it with
patience. That it was once thought moral is as wonderful as that it was
once found readable. What is more easily apprehended is the contempt of
Henry Fielding--is the justice of that ridicule he was moved to visit it
withal. To him, a scholar and a gentleman and a man of the world,
_Pamela_ was a new-fangled blend of sentimental priggishness and prurient
unreality. To him the pretensions to virtue and consideration of the
vulgar little hussy whom Richardson selected for his heroine were
certainly not less preposterous than the titles to life and actuality of
the wooden libertine whom Richardson put forth as his hero. He was
artist enough to know that the book was ignoble as literature and
absolutely false as fact; he was moralist enough to see that its
teachings were the reverse of elevating and improving; and he uttered his
conclusions _more suo_ in one of the best and healthiest books in English
literature. This, indeed, is the only merit of which the history of Miss
Andrews can well be accused: that it set Fielding thinking and provoked
him to the composition of the first of his three great novels. Pamela is
only remembered nowadays as Joseph's sister: the egregious Mr. B--- has
hardly any existence save as Lady Booby's brother. 'Tis an ill wind that
blows good to nobody. There are few more tedious or more unpleasant
experiences than _Pamela_; _or_, _Virtue Rewarded_. But you have but to
remember that without it the race might never have heard of Fanny and
Joseph, of the fair Slipslop and the ingenuous Didapper, of Parson
Trulliber and immortal Abraham Adams, to be reconciled to its existence
and the fact of its old-world fame. Nay, more, to remember its ingenious
author with something of gratitude and esteem.